On Living by Vow
Detail of Living by Vow cover art by Eiji Imao
Zuisei’s talk begins the sangha’s study of Living by Vow, a penetrating dharma text on liturgy and vow by Japanese Sōtō Zen priest Shōhaku Okumura.
In this talk Zuisei asks us to reflect on how we enter and maintain our vows. Although simple, concrete, and beneficial to all, these vows are also vast—infinite, as Okumura Roshi says. How do we tend to them?
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Tonight we’re beginning our study of Living by Vow, by Shohaku Okumura Roshi, a contemporary Zen teacher who studied with Uchiyama Roshi and Katagiri Roshi, both of them instrumental in bringing Zen to the West. As we begin, let me state again the difference between living by karma and living by vow. Very simply, living by karma is living habitually. Living by vow is to live awake. The first isn’t examined, isn’t questioned. The second is examined and examined, and examined again. It’s not taken for granted, it’s not assumed, but is instead constantly renewed, constantly made new through our effort and practice.
The greatest disservice we can do ourselves is to see a little and think, That’s it! That’s it, I’m good here. But pride is such a useful signal, because it shows us what we’re holding up as most important. Like doubt, it can fall into two camps: doubt can be the great doubt that brings us to practice, or it can be what the sutras call hindering or skeptical doubt. It’s essentially self-doubt (Can I do this? Is this working?). Pride too can be self-centered or it can be unconcerned. What I mean by that is that we can feel proud of something we’ve done, something we’ve seen, for its own sake, we don’t have to keep announcing it. Unconcerned pride is pure enjoyment; it has nothing to do with me. You see the difference?
One way to work with pride, if we feel it, is to remind ourselves, “Don’t make it about you.” We’re just the vehicle, the conduit. You write a good book, for example, or give a good talk, make a good piece of art in the sense that it helps people, it shows them something they hadn’t seen before, and it’s your hand, your mind, through which it moves. How wonderful! What a gift it is to offer yourself in this way! And it’s not about you. We can let suchness be suchness without putting our stamp on it. Pride shows us when we’ve taken something large and made it small, made it me-size. Instead, we can let what is large be large—be so large that it covers the entire universe, because it already does.
So, living by vow, this is to live awake, to live with direction, with an intent to wake up and to be of service. And I think it’s telling that Okumura Roshi titled his book on what he calls eight essential Zen chants Living by Vow. In my mind, this highlights the importance of chant, of liturgy, in the expression and the living out of a practitioner’s vow. It points to the fact that vow and liturgy are entwined. In fact, we could say that to make a vow and to voice a vow and to keep a vow are all forms of liturgy, which, as Daido Roshi used to say, “makes visible the invisible.”
It’s like becoming a student, taking the precepts. You do it when you’re already living your life in this way, when you want to tell others, By the way, this is what I’ve been doing and I wanted to share it with you. Living by vow, we bring what’s most important to the forefront of our minds, of our lives. We say, “This is the direction I want to go in. This is the person I want to be. And I vow to do it with all of you.”
Now, much of what Okumura Roshi covers in the practice we’ve already discussed: The bodhisattva vow arises in tandem with the Mahayana, and it’s essentially the vow to wake up and to help everyone else wake up too. Okumura Roshi chose eight chants that we use regularly in our Zen training to show the different facets of this vow and what it’s grounded on.
The first chant, which we’ve been working with in detail, is the Four Bodhisattva Vows, and there are a couple of things I’d like to highlight here. One is the vastness of the vows—I’ve been insisting on us keeping them practical, concrete, immediate, but that’s only because at heart, they are vast, impossible, infinite, like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon—a teaspoon, at that. But that’s exactly how life is, isn’t it? You take care of one thing, and another one comes. You meet one person, you work hard to understand them, you do your best to help them, and when they’re gone, before you have time to take a breath, relax a little, there’s another person, and another.
If we’re practicing to be done with practice, to retire from the precepts and awareness and compassion, we’re going to be disappointed. If we practice just to practice, if we practice because we can, then we’ll be fine—and we’ll be happy, fulfilled. We can keep this in mind next time we’re trying to plow through our to-do list.
What is it like to do one thing at a time—truly one thing at a time—and simply for the sake of itself? A friend of mine used to say that when there is no next, no future, this moment becomes infinitely more important. What would it be like to live a life of no next? Well, I can tell you that it’s the same as living by vow, not by habit. It’s what it’s like to take care of this moment, this person, this dharma, and nothing else—because there is nothing else. And the reason we have to work in order to do this, is because although rocks and cows and elms and turtles all seem to be themselves perfectly, all seem to be fine being in this moment, we human beings get muddled. We get ahead of ourselves.
It’s a little strange, a little unfortunate, but our self-consciousness gets in the way of our being. Therefore, practice and realization, to let go of the burden of me. Therefore, vow, pranidhana: a strong wish to carry out my aspiration, life after life, no matter how difficult. We don’t even think of easy or difficult; it doesn’t come to mind. It’s like that famous koan of the Pang family:
Layman P’ang was sitting in his cottage one day, and he said, “Difficult, difficult, difficult, like trying to scatter ten measures of sesame seeds all over a tree.” “Easy, easy, easy,” said Mrs. P’ang, “just like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed.” “Neither difficult nor easy,” said their daughter Lingjao, “on the tips of a hundred grass tips, the ancestors’ meaning.”
It doesn’t take much to see that each one of these will translate into a very specific kind of life. There are the difficult, difficult people; there are the easy, easy people. And there are those who don’t bother looking for differences.
In his capping verse, Daido Roshi says:
Difficult, difficult, difficult,
Easy, easy, easy.
Neither difficult nor easy.
I say all three—wrong, wrong, wrong.
It is not difficult, it is not easy.
It is neither difficult nor easy.
It is . . . you fill in the last line.
Here we are, filling in the last line—together. That’s the best part of the path: we don’t do it alone, we can’t do it alone. This is the second thing I’d like to highlight.
First we vow to live in reality, instead of in delusion. Then we turn to one another for help. We practice in sangha—with the three minds that Master Dogen describes and Okumura Roshi quotes: Joyful mind, parental mind, magnanimous mind. Joyful mind is turning toward the light, like a sunflower. Instead of complaining about what we don’t have, what’s gone wrong, who we don’t like, we rejoice in our work, in each other, in being able to see, just a little more each day. Not difficult, difficult, but easy, easy.
Parental mind is the mind that pays attention. It’s the mind that chooses to care for others instead of waiting to be cared for. Don’t get me wrong—being cared for is nice. But caring is also nice, and it’s more dependable, because it’s something we can do. Also care has a way of multiplying, just like love, just like attention—it’s contagious. Neither difficult nor easy; just minding my business here, doing what needs to be done.
Magnanimous mind is the mind that refuses to be pinned down, constrained, boxed in. It’s like these vows—they can’t be framed. All this work, this study, this transliteration, is not to frame them, but to bring them to life in each of our lives. You fill in the last line.
And so, we vow to live in reality, together, with the three minds, and we do so, as one vast, single body. And finally, we do it one step at a time, one breath at a time, one period of zazen at a time. Perhaps the greatest gift we can give one another is the gift of presence, and constancy.
If I’m not here, one of you will be. And when that person is gone, someone else will take their place. No, not their place, since that can’t be replicated. Someone else will be here, present, living in reality. That is our vow—impossible, and also perfectly within our grasp.
Explore further
01 : Living by Vow by Shōhaku Okumura
02 : Bringing the Sacred to Life by John Daido Loori
03 : Opposite of Distraction by Zuisei Goddard